Children’s voices were heard loud and clear throughout the Festival.
The Wright Robinson school choir ‘Wright Voices’ were the first voices to be heard at the Official Festival Launch on Thursday 1st July. MMU’s Vice Chancellor Professor John Brooks and Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy were delighted to welcome and thank them.
On Saturday, at the Family Fun Day, the Huaxia Chinese Supplementary School gave a wonderful performance of Monkey King: Journey to
the West, in Mandarin, with English subtitles. It was fantastic!
And, in support of our commitment to making children’s voices heard, more than £2500 was raised for the NSPCC ‘Child’s Voice’ appeal at our Gala Dinner charity auction and by the performance of Carol Ann Duffy and John Sampson’s The Princess’ Blankets show.
Official Festival Reporters
Our 12 official Festival reporters were selected from Craven Wood, Temple Primary and Crumpsall Lane primary schools. The Y5 pupils were trained by journalist and freelance writer, Rachel Broady and their interviews and reviews can be seen on this site.
Over the next few weeks our young journalists will also be compiling the official Festival News Magazine. This will be available on this website as a pdf.
For reporter biographies, click here.
Twitter Team
Our official Festival Tweeters were selected from Chorlton and Newall Green high schools and they been trained by Radio 4 Five Live’s Poet in Residence, Kate Fox.
See the Twitter link to see all the Festival Tweets – there are some absolute gems!
Kate and the Tweeters are currently working on putting the tweets together into a Festival Twitter Poem. Watch this space …
As well as the NSPCC, other charities supported by the Festival include: